Gautam, R (on the application of) v Secretary of State for the Home Department

In reviewing an asylum adjudicator’s credibility assessment, the court must consider relevant expert psychiatric evidence as part of the evidential balance. A medical report diagnosing post-traumatic stress disorder and attributing it to alleged detention and torture cannot be summarily dismissed merely because other aspects of the account are disbelieved, unless the account is so completely discredited that the report has no evidential value.

Fresh evidence may exceptionally be admitted where it becomes materially relevant only after the evidence before the adjudicator has raised the issue. Credibility findings must rest on rational reasons. An adjudicator cannot reasonably infer that detention did not occur because the claimant was released, or because the police did not wait for him to return home several days later.

The claimant, a Nepalese national, sought asylum and protection under the ECHR on the basis that he had been persecuted in Nepal because of his alleged membership of the Maoist party. An adjudicator rejected his account as lacking credibility and dismissed his appeals against the refusal of asylum and the certification of his claim.

The claimant sought judicial review. He challenged the rationality of the adjudicator’s reasons concerning his release from detention, the police search for him, his alleged Maoist activities, and the treatment of a psychiatric report diagnosing depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder. The central issues were whether the credibility findings were rational and whether the medical evidence had been properly considered.

1. The claim succeeded. The adjudicator’s decision was quashed and the matter was remitted to another adjudicator.
2. The reasoning that the claimant was unlikely to have been arrested because he had later been released was not rational. Nor was it rational to infer that the arrest had not occurred because the police did not wait at his home for his return four days later.
3. Evidence concerning the Maoist party’s position on alcohol and gambling, contained in a letter from an authority on Nepal and an Amnesty report, was admissible as fresh evidence. Although the normal rule was that the court considered only evidence available to the adjudicator, exceptional circumstances existed because the material became particularly relevant only after the claimant raised the issue in evidence.
4. The adjudicator had not properly dealt with the medical report. The report attributed the claimant’s post-traumatic stress disorder to detention, torture and fear of the police. That conclusion had to be weighed when assessing credibility. A psychiatric report based on the claimant’s account might be summarily dismissed where the account of torture was completely discredited, but this was not such a case.
5. The adverse credibility finding concerning detention and torture relied substantially on the irrational reasoning in paragraph 27. That reasoning did not provide a rational basis for rejecting the doctor’s conclusions.

The claimant challenged by judicial review the decision of an adjudicator dated 27 September 2002, which had dismissed his appeals against refusal of asylum and against removal to Nepal under the ECHR.

The High Court quashed the adjudicator’s decision and remitted the matter to another adjudicator.